Michigan State University Press
Encyclopedia
Michigan State University Press, founded in 1947, is the scholarly publishing arm of Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...

. During the past six decades it has become a vital part of the institution's land-grant mission
Land-grant university
Land-grant universities are institutions of higher education in the United States designated by each state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890....

 and is a catalyst for positive intellectual, social, and technological change through the publication of research and intellectual inquiry that make contributions to scholarship in the arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....

, humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

s, and social sciences. Located on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing
East Lansing, Michigan
East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located directly east of Lansing, Michigan, the state's capital. Most of the city is within Ingham County, though a small portion lies in Clinton County. The population was 48,579 at the time of the 2010 census, an increase from...

, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, MSU Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses
Association of American University Presses
The Association of American University Presses is an association of mostly, but not exclusively, North American university presses...

.

History

Michigan State University Press traces its origins to the late 1940s when the Michigan State Board of Agriculture established a publishing program at Michigan State College (MSC). MSC’s new president, John A. Hannah
John A. Hannah
John Alfred Hannah was president of Michigan State College for 28 years, making him the longest serving of MSU's presidents. He is credited with transforming the school from a little-known, regional agricultural college into a large national research institution...

, made a recommendation on publications to a special committee. In response, the committee members recommended to Hannah that Michigan State College Press be created. The president acted on their advice and on July 1, 1947, the publishing house came into being. Offices for Michigan State College Press were established in the basement of Berkey Hall, on Circle Drive, and James H. Denison, Hannah's administrative assistant, was appointed as the press's half-time director. In 1949, the MSC took the added step of creating a separate, non-profit MSC Press Corporation; Hannah was given authority to appoint a Board of Directors to oversee Press business operations and to advise the Press staff on a variety of editorial matters. Under Denison's careful tutelage the organization prospered. During his eight-year tenure, the first non-textbook title to carry the MSC Press imprint was issued, a work by MSC Graduate School Dean, Ralph C. Huston.

By 1955, the MSU Press, like Michigan State University, had grown dramatically. In that year and at the same time that MSC made its transition to becoming MSU, the decision was made to hire a full-time press director. Dennison stepped down and President Hannah appointed G. Lyle Blair to fill the position. For the next quarter century, Blair would lead the Press, publishing several hundred scholarly titles in the process, many of which received wide critical acclaim. Among the important works issued during this time were Pulitzer Prize-winning author Russel B. Nye's Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830-1860 (1949 and 1963). Despite dramatic successes during its first quarter century, the Press suffered a change of fortune that has affected most university presses in recent years.

Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the mid-1980s, Press stability was undermined by a deteriorating financial situation in the University and exacerbated by a weakened national economy. By 1984, Press staffing levels had declined and resources dwindled to a point where but a single title was published. In retrospect, it became apparent that the corporation established to insulate the Press from financial difficulties could not avert financial distress. As the Press was a non-profit corporation, it was viewed by many as distinct and separate from the University. Its mission and contribution to the roster of University goals and objectives often was not presented and was, thus, not clearly understood by members of the faculty and administration. By the early 1980s, the Council of Deans concluded that MSU should either abandon its press, or else it should support and expand the scholarly publishing endeavor. They commissioned an investigation, which led them to recommend that Michigan State University Press should be revitalized. Such an action was considered essential in light of comparisons made to scholarly publishing operations at other Big-Ten schools
Big Ten Conference
The Big Ten Conference is the United States' oldest Division I college athletic conference. Its twelve member institutions are located primarily in the Midwestern United States, stretching from Nebraska in the west to Pennsylvania in the east...

 and major land-grant research universities throughout the United States. Michigan State University had grown in the second half of the twentieth century to become one of the nation's premiere institutions of higher learning; thus, a scholarly press had to be an integral part of its structure. Based on recommendations made by the Council of Deans, the administration decided, once again, to commit itself to sustaining and developing a quality university press.

In 1987, Dr. Richard Chapin, Emeritus Director of Libraries, was appointed to serve as half-time Press Director on an interim basis; under his guidance, the Press staff began rebuilding MSU's scholarly publishing program. Among Chapin's notable successes was the acquisition of Max De Pree's book, Leadership is an Art; subsequently, the Press sold the title to Doubleday. After Chapin's retirement in 1990, the University appointed Dr. Fredric C. Bohm, former Editor in Chief at Washington State University Press, to serve as full-time MSU Press director. Building on what Chapin began, Bohm and his staff expanded Press operations. Their successes have been highlighted by a number of awards, including: Two American Book Awards: Lotus Poetry Series Editor, Naomi Long Madgett (1993) and Gordon Henry's The Light People (1995); a “1992 Outstanding Book Citation” from the Colonial Dames of America for Marilyn Culpepper's Trials and Triumphs; and The New York Times Book Review's selection of Peter Josyph' The Wounded River as one of its “Notable Books of 1993. In recent years, Michigan State Press has grown to the point where it publishes eleven scholarly journals and issues 40 new book titles annually; the Press has a backlist
Backlist
A backlist is a list of older books available from a publisher, as opposed to titles newly published .Building a strong backlist has traditionally been seen as the way to produce a profitable publishing house, as the most expensive aspects of the publishing process have already been paid for and...

 of more than 600 titles.

Notable publications

Books published by Michigan State University Press span a broad range of academic disciplines. Awards won by MSU Press include the American Book Award
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...

; Awards presented by MSU Press include the Kohrs-Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism, the largest and most significant book manuscript award in the field of public rhetoric. Book Series sponsored by the Press reflect international, regional, and topical interests that include Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 Studies, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 studies, natural resources, the environment, and North American history with an emphasis on the upper Midwest and the Great Lakes
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...

.

MSU Press was R. K. Naryan’s first North American publisher. Press Director Lyle Blair brought the work of one of India’s greatest 20th century novelists to North America in the 1950s, upon the recommendation of Blair's good friend, author Graham Greene. The Press published Narayan’s first five novels. MSU Press also published five works by Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning author Russel B. Nye.

In July 2001, Michigan State University Press inaugurated a landmark book distribution arrangement with The African Books Collective, Oxford (100+ African scholarly and literary publishers) effectively making the Press the largest distributor of African-published books in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Furthermore, the Press’s 1993 title Eugenics and the Welfare State led to the Swedish Government’s issuance of a formal apology and reparations payments to more than 50,000 women who had been forcibly sterilized as part of that nation’s national eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

 policy.

Several MSU Press books have received recognition in the national media: Sue Carter's Arctic trek Ordinary Women received national TV coverage from both Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...

and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

; Carl Taylor's Dangerous Society was featured in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

, the Christian Science Monitor, and on Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK